1. Field of the Invention
The invention herein is directed to providing power to instruments in a downhole environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
As people and companies continue to search for and extract oil, the quest for hydrocarbons has grown increasingly complex. For example, it is well known that the “easy oil” is generally gone, and exploration now requires searching to greater depths than ever before by drilling a wellbore deep into the Earth. While drilling of the wellbore permits individuals and companies to evaluate sub-surface materials and to extract desired hydrocarbons, many problems are encountered in these harsh environments, where downhole temperatures may range up to or in excess of 300 degrees Celsius.
As well drilling and logging plunges ever deeper into the Earth's crust, the exposure of downhole tooling to high temperature environments continues to increase. Moreover, present day instrumentation is generally not built to operate in such an environment, and will fail well before reaching ambient temperatures within this range. This complication has given rise to all sorts of complex instrumentation. Consistent with other segments of technology, increasing complexity of instrumentation presents users with increasing power demands.
In particular, elevated temperatures often present technical limitations where conventional systems fail. For example, conventional power systems comprising electronics and energy storage will fail at temperatures found in downhole environments either due to degradation or destruction of the conventional energy storage or of the conventional electronics. Moreover, improved instrumentation systems often demand greater capabilities of power systems.
As such, there is a growing need for power systems comprising an energy storage device for downhole operations in high temperature environments up to about 200 degrees Celsius, or higher. Preferably, the energy storage device would provide users with power where conventional devices fail to provide useful power.